Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
I believe that we are asking all the wrong questions, and that we are as a species incapable of asking the right ones.
Consider the world as viewed by a species right "below" us on the evolutionary ladder - say, chimps. Try as we might, a chimp will never understand concepts that we humans consider to be "ultimate questions" - such as the origin of the universe, the vastness of space, the Big Bang, what is "God", etc. Heck, the chimp can't even play checkers, it can't even understand the concept of abstraction at that level. We wouldn't even try to explain any of these concepts to the chimp, because we know it is beyond the chimp's capactity to understand no matter how hard we try. To a chimp, the "ultimate questions" are things like, "how do I get out of this cage?", or "who can I get some food from?", or maybe in a flash of brilliance, "what is on the other side of that hill?". They aren't even capable of some of our modes of thought, such as "irony".
Now, move one rung UP the chain from us - assuming that somewhere in the universe there is a lifeform further evolved than humans. To them, our "ultimate questions" are about as interesting and deep as the chimps "ultimate questions" are to us. We always imagine a superior race landing on earth, answering our questions and enlightening us with their insight. That we would learn so much from them. It think it is far more likely that they won't even try to share their knowledge with us, because even just one step up the chain, it would be completely beyond our capacity to comprehend what they are even referring to, let alone understand it. They might even tell us that, or they might not even bother. Now imagine 5 or 10 steps up the chain - it would be like comparing our insights versus those of an earthworm. And they would have modes of thought that we can't even imagine, let alone experience.
I found your logic quite interesting and reasonable.
By this line of reasoning, I'm not even sure what we consider to be the "universe", or "time", or "travel", or "creation", or "God", are anything of significance whatsoever, and that whatever is REALLY at the top of it all (if that is a view that even holds), is something of a nature we cannot possibly fathom, let alone interact with. And to me, this makes the message and the medium of religion - in any of its current forms - an almost hilarious concept that by definition misses the point.
The primary difference is where I ultimately come to my conclusions. Obviously, if I believe in God, I believe him to be several rungs above us. I do believe we are incapable of understanding him or his reasoning. However, if I believe him to be such a superior being and I trust that his reasoning to be far above my own, I can still trust that he is capable of teaching me on my level. Going back to the primate analogy, though a chimp cannot comprehend our motives, our reasoning, our "ultimate questions," we may teach the chimp something. We can teach a chimp some art, some more advanced communication (primitive levels of sign language), and can give very limited insight into our way of thinking. God, though far above us, is infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely capable. Sure he would know the exact ways to teach his children how to understand on some basic level what his motives are, what our greatest questions can and should be. Chimps can be taught, and we are far more capable than chimps. I believe God has a lot to teach us.